Other incredibly cool numbers-related news:
On December 15, 2005, Dr. Curtis Cooper and Dr. Steven Boone, professors at [A href="http://www.cmsu.edu/index.xml"]Central Missouri State University[/A], discovered the 43rd Mersenne Prime, 230,402,457-1. The [A href="http://www.math-cs.cmsu.edu/~gimps/"]CMSU team[/A] is the most prolific contributor to the GIMPS project. The discovery is the [A href="http://www.utm.edu/research/primes/largest.html"]largest known prime number[/A].
The new prime is [A href="http://www.mersenneforum.org/txt/43.txt"]9,152,052 digits[/A] long. This means the [A href="http://www.eff.org/awards/coop.html"]Electronic Frontier Foundation $100,000 award[/A] for the discovery of the first 10 million digit prime is still up for grabs! The new prime was independently verified in 5 days by Tony Reix of Bull S.A. in Grenoble, France using 16 Itanium2 1.5 GHz CPUs of a [A href="http://www.bull.com/novascale/hpc.html"]Bull NovaScale 6160 HPC[/A] at Bull Grenoble Research Center, running the [A href="http://www.oxixares.com/glucas"]Glucas program[/A] by Guillermo Ballester Valor of Granada, Spain.
Dr. Cooper joined GIMPS over 7 years ago with colleague Dr. Vince Edmondson. Edmondson was instrumental in the campus-wide effort until he passed away in 2003. Cooper, Boone, and CMSU truly earned this discovery, diligently coordinating over 700 PCs!
However, Dr. Cooper and Dr. Boone could not have made this discovery alone. In recognition of contributions made by tens of thousands GIMPS volunteers, credit for this new discovery goes to "Cooper, Boone, Woltman, Kurowski, et al". The discovery is the [A href="http://www.mersenne.org/history.htm"]ninth record prime[/A] for the GIMPS project. [A href="http://www.mersenne.org/freesoft.htm"]Join now[/A] and you could find the next record-breaking prime! You could even win some [A href="http://www.mersenne.org/prize.htm"]cash[/A].
[A href="http://www.perfsci.com/"]Perfectly Scientific[/A], Dr. Crandall's company which developed the FFT algorithm used by GIMPS, will make a [A href="http://www.perfsci.com/souvenirs.htm"]poster you can order[/A] containing the entire 9.1 million digit number. It is kind of pricey because accurately printing an over-sized poster in 1-point font is not easy! This makes a cool present for the serious math nut in your family.
For more information on this prime discovery read the [A href="http://www.mersenne.org/30402457.htm"]full press release[/A].
Roll up your sleeves and get working on that 10 million digit prime, and a big pile of cash could be yours! GIMPS is the "Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search." Check it out! Wow! (Sorry, I get a little geeked up on numbers...)
